CO. much stolen property went this way. The thing was too easy. As far as Eaux Chaudes our road had been cut like a shelf on the side of a gorge, with a torrent thundering below us and cliffs giving back its music on either side : but now we left the chasm and, crossing the troubled water, began to ascend more sharply the flank of a mountain itself. Our way was now most handsome, now striding through hanging forest, now scaling some sunlit spur, now riding upon the shoulder of some complacent giant and all the time commanding majestic prospects, the finest of which was that of the Pic du Midi, the darling of all the range. There was no mistaking this peak, for, apart from its exquisite shape, it stands in the midst of, and yet aloof from its peers, and the fantastic im- pression that they have agreed together to give it pride of place is most compelling. We passed the hamlet of Gabas before the scenery changed, A mile from that huddle of houses, we joined again the scurrying, turbulent water which we had left, and almost at once this led us into a valley which seemed to be shut at both ends. The mountains about it had now lost much of their height and gave it the strange appearance of a gigantic trough—a place of pastures and avalanches, desolate, no doubt, in winter, but BOW a blithesome pleasance, a lazy smiling cloister, where the road, no longer dominant, toiled slowly and obediently upward as best it could. We were not yet above the tree-line, but were plainly Hearing that verge, and I afterwards learned that the way here is closed in winter because no manner of labour can keep it dear. That I can well believe, for we 268